What is the importance of Justice in a “View from the Bridge?”

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What is the importance of Justice in a “View from the Bridge?”

Justice and the Law are not  the same thing and do not co-extend with morality. It is the conflict between these themes that is introduced in Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” and is developed throughout the play. The question of legal enforcement of morality is a complex political, moral, and legal question on which opinion is sharply divided; it is this matter that helps to add to the tension in the play. Alfieri, a lawyer and the first character we are introduced to, highlights the contrast of American law and the Sicilian moral code - the two types of justice we are presented with: on one side, we see modern New York where there are laws and policemen, but the other side there is the Italian-American community that shares an older tradition tracing back from ancient Sicily that insists on justice, as seen by the community, being carried out whether the law allows it or not. The two types of justice we are offered here cannot seem to agree with each other and this is seen in the relationship between Eddie and Marco towards the second part of the play. Alfieri speaks of his present society as being “quite civilized, quite American” and this because “ we settle for half”: settling for half meaning that accepting both morality and justice together not counting each one wholly but accepting the law, and playing by the rules even when the rules are seen as unfair but perhaps more clearly accepting that U.S Law and Sicilian morality have to co exist.

Alfieri, also the narrator, gives us a prologue opening the play, his perspective looking back on the events.

The play is set in Red Hook, a small community of dockworkers and longshoremen in Brooklyn New York during the late nineteen forties.

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We meet Eddie Carbone, the main character of the play, and an Italian Longshoreman who lives in the Red Hook neighbourhood, with his wife Beatrice and young niece Catherine and is respected by his community.

Eddie deeply committed to the code of his society and even gets his wife Beatrice to relate the story of what happened to Vinny Bolzano so that Catherine knows the importance of, and understand discretion.

Beatrice’s cousins Marco and Rodolfo, are welcomed by Eddie when they arrive and seek refuge as two illegal immigrants from Sicily; Eddie  talks of helping them as an “honour”, ...

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